> [Amazon] says that it will “correct the problem” if your property gets damaged. (In the fine print, you also agree to arbitration, rather than a lawsuit, if something goes really wrong.)

This is such crap. If they really were committed to making things right in the event of a problem, they wouldn't have to fear being sued. You want me to believe that you'll protect my most valuable asset after I give you free access to it, but you'll make me trust your good intentions and the judgment of an arbitrator you probably picked?

Seems to me that the right to sue should be considered fundamental, and binding arbitration should be made illegal.

Binding arbitration, when both parties readily agree it's the best way forward, has it's place to settle disputes and shouldn't be outright illegal. It's a lot cheaper and quicker than the legal system and many times court is overkill for minor contact disputes.

Take the "court room" TV shows like Judge Judy, they are an example of binding arbitration that both parties benefit from. The producers look for cases pending in small claims court and offer them to drop their case and settle their dispute in arbitration instead, that arbitration is what's shown on TV. The show pays all parties an appearance fee plus travel expenses and the show pays any judgement that is awarded instead of the defendant. Since it's not a judgement it doesn't show up on public records so it wouldn't affect the defendant's credit report or public records.

Being forced into binding consumer arbitration is certainly terrible and ought to be illegal. Arbitration should not be forced when one party has significant less power than the other. Especially when only one party gets to pick the arbitrator.

Seems like there are two rather different meanings of "binding arbitration."

I agree that the kind where both parties come together and agree, for a specific case, to engage in arbitration and be bound by the result is OK. The kind where you agree beforehand, when no damages have occurred, that if any case comes up then you will both go to arbitration instead of court, is not OK.

The parties to a contract may want an impartial way to settle any disputes that come up down the line, without the high costs, risks, and complexities of litigation. It can be highly rational for both parties to agree to binding arbitration.

Look at the NFL and the players’ association. They have an arbitrator, the very capable Professor Stephen Burbank, handling disputes. Both sides (and the courts) strongly prefer this to having to go to court.

Arbitration is more controversial when foisted upon consumers in contracts of adhesion, i.e. the take-it-or-leave-it contracts you sign all day at stores, amusement parks, websites, etc. Also very controversial is that arbitration clauses are now being used to prevent class action litigation altogether. In those cases, the Supreme Court has nevertheless upheld it through a very broad reading of the Federal Arbitration Act.

If both sides really prefer it, then they'll be able to agree to use Dr. Burbank's services for each individual dispute as it comes up. Two sides involved in a dispute never have to go to court. One of them has to choose to do so.

What you prefer ex ante and ex post is rather different. Ahead of time, you don't know who will be the one claiming wrongdoing of the other, so you'll be willing to agree to binding arbitration. But after the fact, the party possibly in the wrong would prefer to impose the high cost of litigation on the one alleging the wrong.

Another way to state the same thing: very few people enter a contract contemplating that they will be the one breaching it, so they are willing to agree to a system for efficiently adjudicating conflicts. But circumstances change and make breach attractive for a particular party, and at that point they will want to protect their advantage, fairness to the other party be damned.

I think you're justified in having concerns about arbitration, but I don't think the line that you're drawing is the right one. Focusing on the nature of the relationship between the parties might be a more fruitful approach. I don't see any reason why two sophisticated entities, truly engaged in back-and-forth negotiations where each has leverage, should not be allowed to agree to binding arbitration between them for future disputes.

> very few people enter a contract contemplating that they will be the one breaching it, so they are willing to agree to a system for efficiently adjudicating conflicts.

For broad definitions of 'people', I don't think this is true. I am utterly certain that businesses enter into these contracts secure in the knowledge that it is much more likely that wrongs will be alleged against them under the contract than that they will need to allege wrongs against the contractee, and that businesses feel that arbitration is likely to favour them. If businesses didn't believe at least the latter, or even if there were just divided opinions, then arbitration clauses would not be included in every. Damn. Contract.

Yes ideally there would be professional organization of arbitrators, and agreeing to arbitration in a contract would give the smaller party the right to choose a member of that organization. One doubts that the lawyers who inhabit legislatures are eager to bring that happy circumstance to pass.

Binding arbitration is probably the only thing making the legal risk of such a high-liability product/service manageable from Amazon's point of view. If it wasn't available, the product may not even exist.

Which is fine. Maybe something like this shouldn't exist until we have the technology to make it foolproof. At least to the extent where the expected lawsuit frequency is something Amazon is willing to take on.

>You want me to believe that you'll protect my most valuable asset after I give you free access to it

I mean, Maybe I'm just an old man and you should get off my lawn but jesus, what could possibly go wrong here? You give it away willingly then expect there to be no abuse? Why would they give you the right to sue? You just gave them a key to your house and they assume you'll accept any licence because you're so desperate for the convenience that you won't say no anyway.

If they wanted to install an amazon locker on my front porch, that would solve the problem for everyone. But that's not a cool project to work on with computer vision so . . ..

Yeah, I'm just saying, you just gave them a key to your house, which is probably a mistake, and you'll probably sign the arbitration clause because why wouldn't you make two mistakes for ultimate convenience?

Most companies will take as much as you give them. Seems like an easy win in this customer demographic

Giving someone a key to your house is quite different from signing a contract with a binding arbitration clause. The former is an indication that you trust the key holder or the safeguards that are in place. The latter is signing away a legal right, which should carry much more weight.

I generally agree with you, but you imply everyone has a front porch let alone owns space in front of their home door which they're allowed to use for permanent installations.

I bet their designers thought this through and while I think your "cool computer vision project" argument still stands, I believe the real reason is that everyone who owns/rents living space actually has a front door with space for packets behind said door.

I think the real reason is they probably want access to your house for other services and to differentiate their own delivery because USPS isn't going to do this.

My point is that the way to fix the stated problem is with a lock box and for people who that doesn't work it's a cost of business (as it is now). But if you bring that number down to 2b instead of 7 with a one time cost of lockboxes, you've solved the stated problem.

It's pretty obnoxious that USPS regulations have discouraged innovation in home delivery arrangements. Even so, a sufficiently determined homeowner with the right setup could definitely build her own auto-emptying locker (i.e. closing the front door would open a trapdoor package chute) and post a sign directing parcel delivery to it. We don't have to wait on AMZN if this is really a thing that we need.

Amazon Locker on the porch is one solution, but as others have pointed out it won't work for everyone and it's also not scalable for all deliveries the way some other general solutions for delivery people might be.

What they have now is, I think, a choice some people might still make given the trade-off: is Amazon more likely to abuse the key you give them? or are your packages more likely to get stolen off the porch? I've lived in neighborhoods where that cost-benefit would make total sense.

an amazon locker on my front
porch, that would solve the
problem for everyone

The problem with delivery boxes is the time of the cost.

You can't charge for the box upfront without killing customer acquisition - most companies give new customers a discount, not a charge - and if you give the box away, you're $50+ in the hole for a customer who may never shop with you again, and you've got to charge more to recoup the costs of the box.

Amazon is charging $249 (plus installation costs) for the Amazon Key In-home Kit, which includes the smart lock and cloud camera. That’s more then the cost of a bolted-down box with a smart lock. The reason Amazon prefers this is described in the video. For Amazon this is a literal “foot in the door” and a path to selling you other services like cleaning and dog-walking. It’s not just about delivering packages.

I think the subset of people who would have a box installed and never use prime again and the people who would give away a key to their house for 1 delivery is pretty small.

At $50/box, I can outfit 20 million homes for 1 billion which is a 1x cost. If they are really loosing 7b on package theft every year, the one off loss of box cost should start offsetting that right away. A quick google shows that there are 90 million prime members in 2017, so they could do a box per prime member and pay it off in 9 mo. The second year they just save 7 billion. Am I missing something?

The arbitration monkey courts are perversely incentivized by money to go with who gives them the most business. Their bias is inescapable. The agreement thus effectively means you hold amazon blameless for their drivers activity, as you'll never get a dime out of mandatory binding arbitration against a large corporation.

Binding arbitration does not preclude criminal prosecution. I mean, that’s what I tend to think of when I hear “really wrong.” I’m not a huge fan of arbitration clauses generally but they are not unilaterally evil. Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit? It can take over your life for years and leave you broke.

IANAL but if their delivery guy commits a crime, it’s on him. If it becomes known that Amazon knowingly contributed to their delivery personnel committing crimes, or in some way covered them up, or is in some related way defrauding customers, they carry a legal risk beyond what arbitration covers. Everything is a trade off.

Sure, but your contract is with Amazon, they have a subcontractor, that person steals something, Amazon cuts ties with them, You lost something, Amazon is home free, and you may or may not get your stuff back, but you can't go after Amazon whom you have a contract with.

I doubt there's a scenario in which you can claim Amazon did anything criminal. But IANAL either.

This would be a lot more convincing if you explained why you thought I was actually wrong.

There are lots of "free and voluntary" contracts that are illegal. You can't sign away your life or your freedom. You can't even sign a contract where you agree to work for $4/hour. In many jurisdictions you can't sign away your right to work for a competitor. You can't sign away your right to privacy or use of the legal eviction process in a rented apartment.

It's generally agreed upon that there are certain rights that are so important you can't sign them away. It seems to me that access to the courts should be one of them.

Binding arbitration and non-competes, are both disgusting anti-business, anti-American, anti-worker, anti-innovation, anti-rights that need to be killed.

These two horrible tactics have crept in since 2000 into nearly everything.

Signing away your right to compete and your right to use the legal system should both be illegal and have no place in America. How did we let this happen?

For non-competes, NDAs should suffice.

Arbitration should be a step towards legal rather than supplanting it. Many times arbitration is better for both parties in terms of cost/time but when it isn't people shouldn't be signing away the right into forced arbitration to go further.

I walked away from a job offer recently. It was the first company that refused to remove their non-compete clause. They're illegal in California. In Illinois, they're illegal if you made less than $13/hr. They should be made illegal everywhere.

I know one software developer personally who has been screwed over by a non-compete. I know others who simply ignore them, which is dangerous since different states have rules differently on their enforceability.

This was in Illinois. Chicago has a vastly different hiring environment than any other place I've lived in. The interviews are long, there are a ton of behaviour questions (one interview had a solid hour dedicated to behaviour questions; and they wanted really detailed specifics).

It's a far departure from other markets I've worked in. I've personally never even asked behaviour questions during an interview, and really I think you can get a good judge of behaviour just by watching the candidate answer technical questions.

I'm not sure if non-competes are the norm. I have a feeling they might be as they recently passed laws to ban them for low income earners. I've only had one job offer, and they refused to remove it. I have no problem signing NDAs, IP wavers, patent wavers, etc. But I refuse to sign anything that restricts my right to work after a company stops paying me. If it turns out all of them do the same thing, I might have to head back to the west coast.

A company presented one to me a few years back and said that it was "standard". The non-compete covered anything tech-related (so...my job in its entirety) within 50 miles of the business (so...the entire city).

I can say I looked up the ruling history in Oregon and the longest one that I found held was ~6months. Generally courts in OR state are narrow towards non competes. So that's at least some evidence it varies by state.

Arbitration, just like plea deals, are an obviously terrible idea that is legal almost entirely because it reduces the cost of having trials. Less trials is cheaper, which everyone running things likes.

Of course, that's trading justice for money, which most people would agree is a terrible idea. Of course, that isn't reflected in the actual state of the law.

Forced consumer arbitration has been widely adopted solely because it is used to preclude class actions. Some state courts send matters to public arbitration, which is decidedly different.

There are parts of forced consumer arbitraiton that companies do not like, but there's too much upsdie to precluding class actions. Things companies don't like include: the high up front cost and the lack of appeals.

There's nothing legally preventing arbitrators from being vehemently pro-consumer. The incentives prevent it but, legally, an arbitrator could award a crazy amount of money to a consumer on a tenuous basis and there's little that could be done. It's interesting that no such examples exist, however.

There _are_ ways to set up arbitration to be reasonably neutral if that's a goal.

One contract along those lines that I saw basically goes like this: each party picks its own arbitrator (presumably biased toward that party, whatever). Then those two arbitrators together select a third arbitrator, who will actually arbitrate the dispute.

Of course that's not what binding arbitration clauses look like, at all.

Generally, the company lists specific approved third party arbitration administrators as part of the arbitration clause, and that administrator is in charge of picking a specific arbitrator for a case. There’s only a handful of large arbitration associations and one of those is usually picked for most contracts. If you piss a business Off too much, they’ll remove you as an approved administrator and that can hurt. A lot. So you can’t be too pro-consumer. But also, if you show provable bias, the arbitration can be thrown out. So it’s really a fine line around callous indifference that leans towards the business, rather than outright anti-consumer.

As for the hiring part - the business pays most of the arbitration fees, but the consumer is on the hook for a nominal amount plus any attorney fees and potentially extra costs like expert testimony.

Yeah... I can see how third party arbitration can work well between corporations that each have a legal department making sure a reasonable arbiter is picked, but I'm much less hopeful about whenever a single consumer randomly ends up in this situation.

Arbitration can make sense in an international setup with contracts between large companies. For example, if an American company does business with a Russian company, they might agree to do arbitration in the UK in case of a dispute.

Arbitration is legal because of the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925. Before that, judges in the United States treated arbitration clauses as unenforceable despite freedom of contract. [1] It’s a bit odd that 80 years or so passed before consumer arbitration clauses suddenly became ubiquitous in the last decade, but nevertheless Congress could easily amend the law if it wanted to.

I mean, it's legal because no one has made a law against it. "Freedom of contract" isn't absolute - you can't sign yourself up as a slave. Consumer arbitration could be banned too.

I'm talking about consumer arbitration, which is as you say, inherently unbalanced. Yes, I'm sure there are situations where it's a good tool and I'm not saying ban arbitration completely, but right now we can see the damage from it being misapplied.

The ostensible reason for them is that "court is expensive"; if this were true, and impartial arbiters could be found, at the moment a lawsuit was required, both parties could agree to arbitration at that time: just because you are or have filed a lawsuit shouldn't suddenly mean that arbitration is more expensive or impossible.

That is, there is no benefit to agreeing to it at contract inception, if it were as stated: cheaper and impartial, i.e., a better court.

You can't really expect to maintain equal bargaining power when you're in the business of signing away your rights. I mean, what you've said makes sense if you only have one relationship with one other entity. If there are more parties involved, your loss of rights in one fair bargain may translate to a loss of fairness in another.

I think my point may have not been clear. I was responding to someone who offered a theory that it is legal because it reduces the cost of having trials. The implication is that it was decided at some point that we should allow it.

My point is that because it is implied by freedom of contract, it is by default legal until we decide to make it illegal.

No, it's legal because of the Federal Arbitration Act passing in 1925. Prior to that, waiving of such rights "in advance by agreement" was explicitly disallowed, as SCOTUS determined in Insurance Company v. Morse (1874).

Deals that involve informing are a very different animal, in my opinion. I'm talking about the much more mundane, everyday case where it is just getting a lighter sentence in exchange for pleading guilty. There is a clear trend where prosecutors push for insanely overdone charges, then drop it to virtually nothing in the plea deal.

This is terrible because it leads to unjustly excessive punishment for smaller crimes if someone wants to exercise their right to trial, and people being told to just take the deal when innocent because a 1% chance of 10s of years of prison just isn't worth the risk when the alternative is you are out in months, for example.

I'm not sure what you are saying. My point was that political support for allowing consumer arbitration to exist is increased (despite it being largely unpopular with the public), because it reduces court cases which is cheaper for the government. You are saying that there is incentive to save money, but it doesn't at all affect politician's opinions on consumer arbitration?

I'm saying consumers will already choose arbitration if it achieves the same utility, because it's cheaper for them as well. If politicians were not in the pockets of lobbyists they would see that human nature already saves the government money. I argue politicians are not motivated by saving the government money, at all -- seriously, when have they ever been?

Couldn't agree more. I called State Farm last month just to get a quote on a potential car purchase. Instead, I ended up canceling my current policy on the spot because the agent tried to push Limited Tort as if it was just an easy way to save money.

It made me so furious because most people don't understand what they're giving up, and they won't understand until they get into an accident and learn they signed away their rights years ago. The way agents sell Limited Tort gives you a completely inaccurate impression of the potential consequences.

As a PA resident I always thought of it as spending more if you want the lottery ticket. Obviously if you never get into an accident you'll be much richer with lower-priced limited tort, but you can pay extra if you want to bet that you'll be in an accident and will be in that group that might get some money. I know all insurance is gambling, and it's definitely a personal decision.

In car insurance it means you give up your right to sue for pain and suffering unless you suffer serious injuries. The PA definition of a serious injury is "a personal injury resulting in death, serious impairment of body function or permanent serious disfigurement."

So even if you're injured badly enough to need a year of physical therapy for full recovery, you would likely get no money for your pain and suffering under Limited Tort. Without Limited Tort you'd probably get anywhere from $30,000 - $100,000 for that amount of pain/suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, etc.

Would this choosing this policy option only affect payments to you the policy holder for an incident where you were at fault? Trying how understand how this works, since your insurance company usually represents you when trying to obtain compensation from others, or compensates others for damage you do.

I think most people have the same thought as you: They don't see how an agreement with their own insurer could stop them from suing someone else (or their insurer), but that's how Limited Tort works. You sign away your right to sue someone else if they injure you in an accident unless those injuries are extremely severe (loss of limb, death, permanent disability, etc.).

You can look up info on "piercing the tort threshold" if you're curious about specific injuries that are severe enough.

I'm proud to have turned down a economically-maximizing offer with a margin on principle of not signing non-competes. I understand that I was lucky to have the luxury to be able to say no and not everyone is able to do so on a different circumstance, but I believe if you have the option of taking a lower offer without a non-compete you have the moral obligation to your profession to push back and resist, and let them know that a non-compete is morally repellent.

I recently bought furniture. There was small print that said I was agreeing to the terms and conditions on the back. Historically you're used to seeing warranty and financing (if any - none in this case) information. When I flipped it over, it turned out it was a binding arbitration agreement.

> With all that complaining about signing away your right to sue and work, why do you think it's OK to sign away your right to speak? Serious question.

NDAs are also bs mostly but they cover company specific confidential information and possibly information on clients, contractors, employees etc. All of that is fair to not speak about as that is their property and what they are doing.

Non-competes want you to usually stop using your skills that you brought to the company, with other companies. It is really absurd when a company that wants a 6-month contract wants a non-compete for 2 years, laughable.

You can speak, just not about privileged information. With non-competes the most honorable thing they can claim is that they don't want you taking expertise they probably helped pay for you to get (either on-the-job or otherwise) and have someone else benefit from it. But really I think most of us would agree that restricting someone's right to use their own qualifications is overly broad. A better solution to that concern would be that they pay for training, if necessary, and you pay some of it back based on how much longer you remain in their employ, similar to some relocation agreements.

Not discussing confidential material shared with you on condition of your employer with an NDA is quite similar IMO to not sharing material information about a company's health days before their public earnings call. 1st amendment rights are not absolute. I'm not allowed to engage in libel, yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc. I think abiding by NDA's about internal, confidential information is analagous and helps promote real, fair competition.

I stand corrected, thank you. I recall being told specifically in 7th grade social studies that that was an actual case in the 1920's where someone did yell fire. I'm aware of other cases where the court decision was, "here's a ridiculous extreme we obviously wouldn't go to, so obviously let's just rule that it doesn't apply at all," and I hate it, so I'll stop using this :)

I don't need to tell anybody what my former employer was working on, and doing so would not even benefit me. I do need to be able to work in my field though. More often than not, one's skillset is sought by similar businesses.

Imagine a physician signing a non-compete. What's he supposed to do then? Not practice medicine and go be a consultant or something?

"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech [...]"

This is not related to 1st amendment; this is no law being passed by congress or any government body. Nothing prevents a person from speaking after an NDA is signed - they won't get tossed in jail, because no law was broken. However, after doing so, they will be responsible for any civil penalties they agreed to when they signed the contract.

I only brought in the first amendment to highlight the importance of the right to free speech. Contracts are important but perhaps some things should not be allowed in them. Many contracts are unfair, but people enter into them anyway for various reasons.

People have been trying to charge rent on ideas for just about forever. We have patents and copyrights for that purpose. Not that I'm a fan of where that have gone (the length of copyright and even 20 years on patents).

The thing with non-competes is that most businesses realize that their employees could run circles around them and out-compete them without even trying if they were brave enough to try. So they fear that. I mean, no overhead of a radically expensive office building plus its utilities and maintenance, those multiple layers of ineffective management, the executive cherry on top charging an ultra premium to make your company look good? Cut that stuff out and you barely need to charge anything to continue making a perfectly opulent living for a typical technology worker. And it's not like the office or any of those things actually add anything of value, they're all just maintained mostly through sheer force of will and tradition - things proven to fail at any moment.

So if you sign something that severely penalizes going out on your own and competing against your employer, they're going to jump on that and treat it like a lifeline because it very much is exactly that.

I had good experience arbitrating with AT&T over a missing credit for an old phone I sent in when upgrading. They didnt know where the phone was even though tracking showed they received it, and they werent giving me a credit. I tried to escalate and speak to more and more agents but ultimately I sent a letter to their legal department with a Request For Arbitration form. A paralegal from their legal department contacted me and offered me a good sum of money shortly after. Really was a smooth process..

The alternative of going to trial more often has its own downsides. Similar parallels to plea bargaining. If the cost of a plea bargain or arbitration is $500, and the cost of a trial is $5000, with trials only there are many injustices that would never be pursued.

> Binding arbitration and non-competes, are both disgusting anti-business, anti-American, anti-worker, anti-innovation, anti-rights that need to be killed.

Agreed. Here's how I look at it:

If a company really screws you over, you can sue. It's a lot of time and money, but it's worth it for a big problem. But what if the problem is small?

If I get screwed out of $5 by a dodgy company, I won't bother to sue. But if they've done the same to a lot of people, a class action lawsuit makes it worth some lawyer's time to go after them.

Arbitration clauses destroy that. Without class action, we need much more vigorous government intervention. Failing that, consumers lose the trust in the marketplace, harming commerce and making everybody poorer. And we'd likely see more proactive regulation as well, reducing innovation.

A DNR doesn't sign away your right to life, it just asks others not to take positive action to save you. A more analogous situation would be assisted suicide, which is pretty controversial. Even then, assisted suicide is seen as a benefit to the person who's going to die, and the person who assists gets paid for it. I believe a contract which says you get to kill me in exchange for paying me (either in advance or to my heirs, presumably) would be uncontroversially invalid.

I'm not sure I see the relation to powers of attorney. Are you saying that granting PoA to another person is similar to granting enforcement rights to an arbitrator?

No, I was just referring to how someone can be granted a durable power of attorney, in which case they have license to remove the grantor from life support. Anyway, I support everything you said, and just to be clear, I'm no fan of arbitration; I was mostly playing devil's advocate.

A durable power of attorney doesn't sign away your right to life. It gives someone revocable control of your life. You can withdraw that control at any time (assuming that you have the mental competence to be able to make legal decisions). There is no way to sign away your right to life, you can always take back any rights that you give someone.

I think you did a decent job playing devil's advocate, because now that you explained it a bit more, I'm not quite sure how PoAs fit into this. Maybe it's different because it's not done in exchange for something?

There is zero reason not to include such a contract in every point of contact between you and society if you let people run with this one eventually the bottom of your receipt for a pound of grapes will contain such language and they'll call it a contract of adhesion.

If mandatory binding arbitration included as part of your standard interaction with businesses is a net negative for 99% of people and a positive for business owners and large stock holders there is no particular reason why the 99% can't vote not to allow the owners to do that.

A few months ago my car got covered in white paint from the garage of the apartment I live in. I had it detailed, which they agreed to pay for right away. They credited my account for the cost of the detail, then added it back as a rent charge when I refused to sign away my right to sue over the incident (well, the contract said basically they weren’t liable for anything that happened at all around that time on the premises. also the detailing didn’t remove the paint). They required me to pay back the money in order to make my rent payment the next month, or i would have been charged 10% of the rent + detailing charge as a fee. So yeah, avoid services like renting an apartment and you’ll be all set. Good luck!

It is, but that doesn't make it nice to put unreasonable conditions in a contract. If I put a clause in a contract saying I'm allowed to kill you if I get annoyed with you, while promising that I definitely won't kill you and I'm just trying to cover my bases, I don't think that would go over too well.

A contract requires a "meeting of minds", informed consent, and both parties having reasonable power to negotiate the contract. Such contracts definitely can contain clauses like binding arbitration, and you should be free to execute such contracts.

However, there's a strong opinion (e.g. encoded in EU law) that the standard contract forms offered by companies to consumers are not really properly negotiated contracts (even if consumers willingly sign them) and thus in such contracts you're not allowed to enforce a certain set of terms that are considered abusive. One of such terms is a binding arbitration clause.

Your customer is free to negotiate and make a contract containing such clauses with you, and then it'd be valid, but if you simply get all your customers to sign on the dotted line under such a clause, it's understood that you don't really have obtained informed consent from any of them.

There has to be equal information, equal negotiating power and recourse for both parties. There are many cases where there is a huge disparity in information between the parties : Doctors and patients, for example, is an obvious case, or between lawyers and their clients. I would argue that Amazon has far more negotiating power and information in any contract with the average consumer, and therefore the law should be heavily biased in favor of the consumer. Even if there was no binding arbitration and Amazon does screw up and harms the consumer, will the consumer even have the resources to prevail in a lawsuit? Binding arbitration stacks the deck even more in the favor of the more powerful party.

If Amazon were signing a contract with Google or Apple, I assume that they both would have relatively equal negotiating power and access to information. With you or I? I highly doubt I can afford it.

For the same reason we don't let people sign away personal rights. We have plenty of evidence showing that it is actively harmful to society at large. To pretend otherwise under the guise of "freedom!" is insulting to all involved. Including you.

Because there are some rights it's bad to be allowed to give up. You can't sign away your right to life or freedom. Being able to have your grievances heard in a court of law should be considered a fundamental right, like the right to life.

How about a somewhat updated law? Binding arbitration should only be legal when made between two entities who have a power difference no greater than that of an adult and a teenager. If the power difference is greater, say like that between a non-lawyer and a multinational corporation, then the agreement is illegal because consent cannot be given in such a power vacuum.

Kind of a weird article - it's very long, describes in great detail how everything works, and the regret is hidden about three quarters of the way down, and I am still unclear about what the regret is. That he signed up to a walled garden, and the key doesn't work when you want to share it with your dog walker? The walled garden response is "you should've known as much" and the dog walker response would be "this is version 1"

Anyway, this feels more like an ad for amazon key than a real takedown. Oh wait... WaPo, Bezos... right.

I'm cynical in a different way, though. I see this article as the sort of turgid content that dominates tech media: Take some product or behavior that's new, act like it's scary and milk some content out of it. The title itself is simply ridiculous -- the regrets seem to be that the product is exactly what it is held as.

It isn't for me. For some people heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem it might be a fine compromise.

Skilled technical people don't write for publications because the pay is terrible compared to even an entry level tech job. The best articles I see anymore are by guest writers who do work in industry but wanted to write an article for whatever reason.

I dunno. I mean, there's a camera in your house and you just gave a company a key to your house to deliver products to you via some person you have never met and will likely never meet ever. Like, your paranoia meter should be red-lining.

In a way I absolutely think this is true, but it is more the way we consume media now than our basic values changing.

Previously I had a few sites that I visited daily to read tech news. Media properties where writers tried to keep a constant supply of entertaining and illuminating articles that I give attention and focus to, even if superficially not interesting, because I have trust that it's worth my time.

Now I instead rely upon social news and even Facebook feeds to supply the more interesting articles, filtered and crowd "curated". In that gaudy world, you need to show your legs and hoot and holler to get attention. So we end up with this sort of media. We see the same thing with blogs where many of us abandoned subscriptions and readers and just assume that the good content will percolate into our view.

I don't think I'm alone in this behavior, and it has been negative to the whole.

>The bad news is Amazon missed four of my in-home deliveries and charged me (on top of a Prime membership) for gear that occasionally jammed and makes it awkward to share my own door with people, apps, services — and, of course, retailers — other than Amazon.

I think negative articles like this can hurt or help things. People know that twenty years ago, articles about how the scary internet is abducting your children got people to think more about it, then adoption kicked in. Even news about the NSA didn't get average users to change browsing habits, despite access to VPNs and tor. All the scary articles about the bitcoin bubble have undoubtedly gotten more people to buy bitcoin.

I think tech companies would prefer to be seen as dystopian over idiotic. Negative tech stories that I've heard which have destroyed the companies -- juicero, for example, or google glass -- show their customers as idiots.

> The company promises deliveries are only made by Amazon employees it thinks are trustworthy.

Amazon doesn't have employees delivering packages. They are all contractors, and often contractors hired by contractors. The concerning thing about this is that it literally means Amazon may have only learned the name of the person who is accessing your home 30 minutes before they are inside it.

Likely not very well vetted in advance. I ordered a few computer parts last month that never arrived. Amazon used a "shipping partner" instead of one of the mainstream delivery services. Amazon claims to have no idea what happened to my package but it sounds like the contractor just took off with their vehicle full of goods.

It wouldn't surprise me if they do very little vetting, especially this time of year, and just suck up the cost of packages that contractors fail to deliver. Perhaps for large shipments they go after the contractor legally if they can find them but for smaller shipments they probably just blacklist the person and move on. Taking an extra ten days to get my order via replacement shipped by a reputable delivery service was mildly annoying but I certainly never would allow Amazon's random hodgepodge of contractors enter my home.

I recently met a friend of a friend who was just hired on as an Amazon delivery contractor. He said that to get the job, he replied to an ad on Craigslist, met someone in a parking lot, talked to him for 10 minutes and was told that he had the job. The guy who hired him doesn't work for Amazon, but is himself a contractor. So, not a whole lot of vetting going on there.

Incidentally, this is in the Pacific Northwest, not far from Amazon HQ. S

It is a massive organization that includes employees, contractors, and contractors hired by contractors. I've had Amazon deliveries dropped off by UPS, FedEx, USPS, white vans with the logo of local independent delivery services (contractors hired by contractors... that's Amazon Logistics), and random people in their own cars using an app on their phone (contractors... that's Amazon Flex).

What makes you sure they aren't contractors? Ask them the next time you get a delivery.

They may drive trucks with the Amazon logo; they may tell you they are delivering for Amazon; they may be driving around with an app made by Amazon that gives them step by step instructions of what to do. But they are not legally employed by Amazon. Not in the US or UK. I spent some time as a part of their software organization, and have been inside the delivery stations. As far as I know, there are no employees delivering packages.

You can speculate as to why Amazon would want things setup this way. I don't speak on the company's behalf.

If someone wants to steal from my apartment or trash it, there are a million better ways that don't involve them being employed or contracted by Amazon, being tracked and having video of their entry into my abode.

As long as Amazon knows their name, has them tracked and my Key takes video, it seems like there's near zero risk of that person doing something illegal. It's just too easy for them to get caught.

Yea considering the alternative is package theft from "someone" whose face my security camera might get a snap of, and then my only option is to go to the cops with a grainy picture and a timestamp, I'll go with the "Amazon, who is placing a great deal of their reputation on the line by allowing contractors in the house."

All Amazon Flex delivery drivers are independent contractors. It's not much different from driving for Uber. My last Amazon package was delivered by a 21 year old in a t-shirt and jeans driving an old Nissan sedan.

I was curious about where Amazon Flex delivered so I went to their site. No indication of whether my area was covered or not so I ended up downloading the app. Once signed in the only location listed was Pennsylvania. Not where I live so instant delete. Not sure why they didn't just put that on the landing page.

Maybe it's different in US, but in UK all deliveries from Amazon are done by 3rd party companies - DPD, Hermes, Parcelforce, etc, even if the tracking website says "Amazon Logistics" - it's just a front company.

In the US, they are all individual "contractors". They call them Flex Drivers. They are similar to Uber drivers. Individually hired but are technically contractors. So Amazon does background checks on them but technically they are not Amazon employees, they are "self employed". Which is why many of them drive things like Uhaul vans for deliveries. They try to cram as many orders as they can into a van, and rush them through, to get the biggest possible payout.

I read about one of Arabic countries - I don't remember if it was the Emirates or Saudi Arabia, but one of the big names. The newspaper article claimed milkmen in that country walk into your house, take money lying on your fridge, leave the change, put milk into your fridge, walk out. You typically leave your house unlocked, the article claimed.

I live in an old house in a cooler climate and my place and most of my neighbors' have a special small two-way "cabinet" through the exterior wall in the back where the milkman used to leave your delivery, sort of like a mailbox built into your house.

I lived in the UAE a few years ago, and I wouldn’t really be surprised. When I had water delivered I just left money and the empty bottles on the doorstep and never had any issues.

One time I was at a coffee shop in a mall and there was a table next to me of ~8 people having a business meeting with laptops. Lunch time came, so they left all their stuff - laptops and all - and went for lunch. After an hour they came back and continued.

Petty crimes like this aren’t a thing in this country. If caught, a foreigner is just going to get jail time (which is most likely better than US county jail) and deportation.

I would not trust that rosy story for a second. In UAE you can get the death penalty for homosexuality, drug use or saying bad things about their religion.

"Under Emirati law, multiple crimes carry the death penalty, and the sole method of execution is firing squad. Current law theoretically allows the death penalty for treason, espionage, murder, successfully inciting the suicide of a person "afflicted with total lack of free will or reason", arson resulting in death, acts of indecent assault resulting in death, importing nuclear substances/wastes in the environment of the State, adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, perjury causing wrongful execution, rape, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, sodomy, homosexuality, drug trafficking[1] and joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant[2][3], although death sentences are frequently commuted to life sentences. Overseas nationals and UAE nationals have both been executed for crimes."

I never said UAE is an utopia or even a fun place to live. I think there is merit to criticism of Islam that it doesn't distinguish between religious and secular, so it's a totalitarian state by default. I believe that the world of Islam did not have its Renaissance and Enlightenment. A radio anchor on my favorite station once half-joked that the greatest invention of Christianity is tolerance of Atheism. According to him no other revealed religion even tolerates atheists.

But I believe in giving credit where it's due. If petty crime is very rare in UAE, it's food for thought. World is not black and white and it's perfectly possible the world of Islam does some things better. It's worth a closer look. I believe in an eclectic approach where you take the best parts of things.

Seems like that would be confirmation for the claim. I would expect that in a wealthy area with ridiculously harsh penalties for petty theft, you would have little to fear in terms of being a victim of those crimes.

Similar services still exist in America, though they're not as widespread as they once were. I think this is mostly because there aren't a lot of services that come to your home anymore other than package delivery.

As recently as three years ago I lived somewhere where the dry cleaner could go into your house and hang your dry cleaning on a doorknob and take your outgoing bag of laundry/dry cleaning. And if you live in an apartment/condo building of a certain level, very often the concierge will deliver packages and groceries into your home.

Some garbage services are like that: they'll go to your backyard and carry the bins to their truck, then put the bins back. This sort of service is only available when a single firm hasn't bribed its way into a municipal monopoly.

Intersting idea...I had an Amazon package stolen off my porch this week, the thief opened it and saw it was the novel Watership Down, then threw it back on my porch. Stolen packages are a way of life in my neighborhood.

well that's sad for you and good that you do not live in germany. most post services will actually give the package to your neighborhood if you are not at home.
the first week in my new neighborhood took me a while to track some missing packages down. (well instead of bringing me the packages, which the people now do they wanted to know me, so they waited till I came to them...)

No, "to a neighbor" is correct. Although the delivery guy will not make a dedicated effort to find an available neighbor because of time constraints. I suppose that when they deposit the package with a neighbor, it's because the neighbor received a package themselves, so they could ask them to take your package as well while signing off on their package. Most of the time, when you cannot receive your package personally, you'll get a card telling you to pick it up at a branch office of the postal services (which usually means some small unrelated shop like a drugstore).

I don't personally have any issue with packages being stolen. But I suspect that, for people who live in a neighborhood where the occasional lifted package that was sitting in plain sight is an issue (but rampant theft is not), leaving a plastic tub with a small "packages here" label on the porch or wherever is probably a pretty reasonable thing to do.

Sometimes I wonder how far Amazon will go, and if/when antitrust mechanisms will start tapping the brakes. They went from an online bookstore to the entire breadth and depth they are now with still higher aspirations. Where will they stop? Healthcare? Utilities?

2027: "We want to own all the water companies so we can plumb Amazon-Basics-knockoff Soylent to your faucets."

I'm ready for this kind of obscene horizontal integration to stop. It's of course logical for tech companies to explore new areas to make money in, but if the end result is only a few corporations controlling most of our economy, it's not worth it.

I don't even really see limiting horizontal integration as unethical/anti-business at all, if implemented well. Sure Bob Shareholder won't be able to directly invest the $X in profit from his Amazon/Google stock back into the company, but that profit would instead be given as dividends that he could then invest in companies that would be doing what Amazon/Google wanted to do anyway.

But then again, that includes a bunch of overseas revenue, so that's not exactly apples-to-apples. And it's actually comforting to see that Walmart is 4x the size of Amazon, because I don't think they have the same scope of ambition or cultural / technological relevance today. I certainly don't think that the Walmart of 2030 will be controlling all aspects of our daily life, though people may have worried about that 20 years ago. But companies ebb and flow and I suspect that Amazon will reach its own "dominance high point" in the next decade or two and then retreat in terms of ambition and relevance. New swaths of the economy will open up that Amazon is ill-equiped to dominate, just like has happened to corporations for the last century before them.

This is true, but then again Walmart gave up on anything more than being a supermarket (except for being an online store, but that's just them addressing their competition). Walmart isn't scary because they're not reinvesting their profits much compared to their competitors, which tells you they really aren't in "growth mode" anymore. Amazon hasn't given up yet and we'll see how long that takes. It could be the next Walmart, or it could be the next Enron, or even the next East India Company.

Is Amazon liable if your packages get stolen? If that is the case, that could explain why they want a "key" to your house.

Why else would this do this?

Oh, wait they are bleeding money.

>The amount of money that Amazon lost on shipping — a.k.a. the net cost of landing all those brown boxes on your doorstep in record time — reached an all-time high of nearly $7.2 billion in 2016, according to GeekWire’s analysis of the e-commerce giant’s financial results.

I would be curious to see another person's take on how much Amazon loses on people stealing packages per year.

It's because it's a value-added service that Amazon's delivery service can provide that UPS and FedEx cannot (at least as easily). I don't think it's about losses from stolen packages--it's about negotiating lower rates with big players as they flesh out their own capacity to deliver those packages.

Yes, The low liability, ups/usps friendly way to do this is to turn that 7 billion into a bunch of little yellow metal boxes with a key pad. I bet a lot of people who want the convenience would let them screw it to the front of the house or down to the deck

They're halfway there. The yellow boxes are in most grocery stores in my area. And there are green ones at Whole Foods.

Considering the USPS won't service individual house mailboxes in some parts of the country anymore (only communal mailbox clusters up to a mile away), what's the difference between getting a package from the USPS lockbox, or the Amazon lockbox which is located at a place I was going anyway?

I get my packages sent to my grandmother because my place is way too open for me to trust deliveries... my grandmother's at least has a wall in front of the front door so packages just dropped off aren't visible from the street.

While true, that shouldn't be overly relevant in this case. They are one-time codes that you will be sending once the person is at your door.

There is a potential issue if you're talking about sending someone a code (or multiple codes) several days in advance, but I don't think the systems are set up to do that currently.

Plus you get an alert and a picture/video whenever one of the codes is used so it's fairly high risk for a burglar. You get an entry alert and it's some dude in a mask you call the cops. I tend to think that they'll stick to the old fashioned way of just breaking a window instead.

If someone wants to break into your home they're going to break in through a window/back door, etc. They aren't going to go through the hassle of spoofing your number and generating an entry code when they can wrap their hand in a sweatshirt and punch some glass.

It depends surely on what they're after. If they want small electronic goods to sell for drug money then they'll smash a window. If they want identity/banking information so they can still the contents of your bank account(s) then probably the SMS and number spoofing is better for them.

You can't do that when you're making a critical review for a newspaper. If you criticize someone's product you have to make sure that you gave that product every chance to succeed -- if the system failed and you installed your strike plate your review is subject to the criticism that you botched the install.

It's not a lack of ability it's a lack of confidence with a side of liability. See:

>which was Amazon’s recommendation.

Customer support and warranty become a massive pain in the ass if you're not a professional. Amazon will fight tooth and nail not to work with a DIYer because when their lock doesn't latch and someone gets killed in a burglary they don't want to be the only first party with money when the lawyers start going up the links in the chain. Obviously the risk is tiny but with a professional installation they can point fingers at the locksmith and hope the lawyers settle for whatever the locksmith's insurance can provide.

Being a DIYer in this day and age is a massive PITA "because liability"

This seems like a reasonable conclusion. I was thinking the author was trying to play it as safe as possible to not only be fair to Amazon but also to prevent them from having a way to blame anything else but their product or service, however your conclusion seems reasonable for not just the author's motivation but also worth considering in general when dealing with products that protect us or our belongings.

Everything I ever want to fix, an enterprising handyman has already made a monetized YouTube video on. All the repairs I’ve done in the last 4 years have been faster than waiting for a repairman. I use an expert’s video and parts I’ve bought at a nearby hardware or auto parts store.

In the the past I slogged through radiator replacements by looking at a Chilton manual. Now, an expert mechanic has created a step-by-step video with all the gotchas that wouldn’t fit in a repai manual. This is the golden age of DIY.

You know they have classes at Home Depot and Lowe’s for home repair, right?

You're missing the point entirely. It's not about the difficulty in making a change or a repair. It's about liability.

If you hire a locksmith, then you have reason to believe that someone was professionally trained to fix the issue at hand. They may not do it any better nor faster, but their job title implies that they know what they are doing by the book.

A DIYer doesn't have that same set of credentials. You could be better than any locksmith in your town, but you're still considered a hobbyist

Haha last time we went to the Gulf for a fishing trip, I found my father in the driveway staring at his 225hp boat motor which had lowered all the way and wouldn't raise again. My first reaction: let's go to YouTube! 15 minutes and a little lifting later, the motor was in the proper travel position.

In my experience the hole in the jamb usually has a lot of wiggle room. Especially in this case: if the bolt enters the plate but hangs up a bit, it probably needs to move less than a millimeter. When the hole hasn't been in the right place I've usually used a pocketknife or flathead screwdriver to enlarge it, but I can see that a small chisel would be "better". Perhaps competence substitutes for tools somewhat?

Aligning strike plates (catches, hinges, etc.) is a gigantic pain in the ass. It's not just using a screwdriver, it's getting everything to line up correctly, and potentially using a chisel, wood putty, etc. to make the correct cutouts in your door or frame.

It's also the case that any of these solenoid-operated locks are a lot less sensitive to binding than if you're manually turning a key and joggling the door as needed. Nothing specific to the Amazon product. When I put in a Schlage keypad lock, I had to fiddle quite a bit to get it to work reliably even though there was no real problem operating it manually.

To be fair, most don’t own drill bits long enough to make the holes necessary for the long screws that hold it on. But yes, it takes much more time to wait for the locksmith than to just purchase the part and do the work yourself.

And it’s cheaper to buy the drill and the bits than to have a locksmith at your house for 20 minutes.

Sure, but this is in the context of a household in which meeting delivery people is inconvenient. I haven't found locksmith service to be more convenient than package delivery, although of course I might not be spending enough on it...

His door had an issue that a professional lock installer wasn't able to handle. He probably just assumed it was something that required a locksmith. If someone told me I needed a new strike plate, I wouldn't even know what that meant.

They knew. It's one of the ways a subcontractor makes up for the low bid that allowed them to get the work in the first place.

"The work order does not include this, so we can't finish. If we leave now, you'll have to get it done on your own, then reschedule, which means you have to wait at least a few more weeks. However, if you slip me $50, I can take care of it right now, and then I'll be out of your hair forever."

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for consumerism, but if you got to the point where the business you're buying products from has the key to your house just so you can keep up with deliveries, maybe it's time to reconsider your spending habits.

It's the best option if your alternative is mailing to a PO Box. Also I like this company August which makes a similar product. I'd rather just let the delivery person in remotely each time. I read August is also making a robot to deliver your groceries to your refrigerator.

And I know Snap has been trying to do Snap2Store. Their head hardware guy made the Ring doorbell hardware. He also made some thermal imaging system. I'd probably give Snap a key to my house with Snapdrones surveilling. (Automonous social ephemerality to highlight my life?)

alternative take - if you got to the point where you're getting in your car and driving around town for everyday necessities like groceries, pantry items, toothpaste, socks, replacement usb cables, vacuum cleaner filters, etc. with maybe the occasional splurge on something frivolous, maybe it's time to reconsider your shopping habits.

You could make it yourself with cheap parts and some good engineering wrt power failures etc. (don't make it electric only, real world ain't Star Trek). The electromechanical lock is the most expensive part, but everything else can be done with a *PI like board plus battery and an encrypted network connection. If you don't have a fixed IP or are behind a firewall/NAT you can automate a mail reader on the board to monitor an address for an encrypted message containing a code to unlock the door, shoot a few images using a webcam and mail them back to you, or do other things. Basically anything that can be done by closing a switch a meter away can be also done a half planet away through the Internet.

Actually the mechanism could be totally mechanical. You just want a compartment with a delivery door and a trap door, which aren't both open at the same time. See that in action at any big blue USPS mailbox.

Not for them. They'd have to make sure your total volume of packages will fit in the box and probably have the delivery person inspect that the box itself was properly secured (chained or bolted to the house?)

And they apparently are considering some kind of marketplace for in-home services where Amazon takes a cut of the price and they grant your dogwalker, house cleaner, grocery deliveryperson or personal chef access through the same system.

Amazon isn't concerned with what customers want but what is fastest for their deliveries. If they use the same app to open the door, and mark as delivered, then a lockbox would increase the time per delivery.

Why would it be harder to place an item behind a locked lid to a box than a locked door to a house? If anything the box should be faster; if it were a smart device it could easily be programmed to be unlocked or even ajar any time it is empty.

I read, "a lockbox that you can put on your front porch," as a realtor-style lockbox that holds a key to the house and needs a pin entered to get the key. For what you wrote, it likely wouldn't have the same slowdown.

Is there a really need for this type of product? With the choice of either collecting your parcel from a delivery office or the multitude of delivery lockers that are popping up everywhere is this a problem that needs solving? Perhaps someone could help me to understand if there are particular scenarios where this would be beneficial to allow this form of parcel delivery.

There is a huge convenience to getting your packages at your door rather than having them shipped to a separate location. For a household with kids, we are getting several deliveries a week. Things like diapers, wipes, food, etc. I'm already used to just opening the door and picking them up, so driving somewhere to get them really defeats the point of ordering them online. I might as well just drive to Target instead.

I'm guessing tho that lots of people don't have people they've met personally. In fact, that seems like it would be pretty strong evidence of some kind of illegal activity, e.g. employment tax evasion. I'd guess a good number of people use a service that might sometimes, e.g. send someone other than the regular person.

[I'm unsure why a landscaper would need to enter your home or apartment or whatever.]

Not to mention the actual security of locks. People are discussing this functionality as if standard doors and locks are strong enough to keep intruders out. No, they keep honest people out; a real intruder can do things like open or break a window, pick a lock (or use a bump key), or kick in the door. Those are all a lot easier than hacking your fancy IoT locks and jamming Wi-Fi.

I grew up about an hour from the nearest UPS facility. A closer one still doesn't exist to this day. I didn't have to worry about people stealing a package from my house, but if you go five minutes into town, you get to neighborhoods that are much more dense. If you wanted UPS to hold your package, you had a 2 hour round trip to get something you paid to have delivered to your house.

I'm not a strict advocate for Amazon Key, but I can definitely see the use case for it.

I'm a happy Amazon Key customer. I live in a reasonably dense part of San Francisco, and the nearest Amazon Locker to me is a mile walk from my home. The Lockers also tend to be at capacity, resulting in packages sometimes getting rejected and returned to Amazon. There's also the difficulty of getting bulky or heavy packages delivered.

My case is atypical though because I installed it on an outer gate, meaning delivery people are not actually entering my home.

This is the solution that seems sensible for me. Creating a "locker" (mudroom, just a big box, a garage... with access only to that space for Amazon and others). Granted that isn't going to be worth setting up for many people. But for those that it is it worth the bother it seems like a valuable feature (secure storage at location accessible to delivery personnel).

And that the feature also lets those that want to just to give access to their whole house seem a useful way to grow the adoption (since my guess is many more people will take this more convenient, though less secure option).

That's not necessarily as easy as you seem to be making out, a lot of people don't have cars which rules out large or heavy packages and some delivery offices have inconvenient opening times (often business hours + Saturday but if you already have recurring commitments on Saturdays you might have to go through a lot of effort to make the time during the week).

a number of other threads on this service contained comments from folks who had limited mobility, or who had relatives in such a situation. they suggested having someone able to come in and just set the package on a table or other surface that doesn't require bending down would be valuable to them.

The difference is, the attacker must be physically at the lock. Sure, they do that all the time. They risk getting shot. My neighbors have shot invaders. The Sheriff high-fived them.

Now they can be in your neighborhood, using a list of popped accounts to unlock a batch of houses. They can look at your Amazon connected camera to know when you have left your home or children unattended. Amazon accounts get popped all the time.

Amazon is also a great place to get GB/TB of customer data from public S3 buckets.

Certainly, but you are increasing your risk by entering the property. Internet is entirely remote and can be somewhat anonymous through proxies. Perhaps you could even hire some kid to go ring the doorbell for you, but then that kid has seen your face. I mean, we could keep going down the PR rabbit hole, but I think some people will be able to see the differences in risk here.

If you wear a reflective vest and carry a barcode scanner and just walk into a house nobody will ask questions and you know you'll be able to unlock the door and get in before you even knock on the door. Way less risk than any sort of forced entry.

The crazy thing is, very few B&Es are done via picking the lock, even though it's not a difficult skill. It's easier and faster to just hit the window with a rock, grab some stuff, and run.

There is a public perception of these super-smart techno hackers that crack all of these damn gizmos and rob you blind, but the reality is that most all B&E is done by dumbass drug addicts who barely make anything on a haul and get caught quickly. Even the more sophisticated ones use basically the same tactics but also make sure to move to a different county every couple of houses to avoid sitting in a jurisdiction for too long.

It's a high risk low reward game. Only the most desperate play it. Someone smart enough to hack the system is smart enough to have many better ways of making money. Even if someone sells a kit for dummies to do this it's still more work than picking up a rock.

"There are other ways additional ways to cause harm" is not something that requires a counter-argument in the first place. It's like saying "Nobody lives forever anyway, why ever visit a doctor? After all, not ever visiting a doctor is not inherent to mortality or illness."

And while we're at it, the package being left on your porch is not inherent to packages getting stolen or not containing what they should. Heck, ordering stuff isn't even the only way to buy things. So why prevent against it by giving Amazon access to your house, of all things out of all the possibilities there are? The decision to be made isn't between having windows or an Amazon lock, those things are orthogonal. You're adding a shitty additional link to an already weak chain.

Now any random person can break your window with you knowing, any random person can kick the door in with you knowing, and -- I'll pretend to not see the moved goalposts because as I said, no counter-argument is required to a non-argument anyway -- a skilled lockpicker can let themselves in without you knowing. Now, thanks to this amazing technology and given enough time, a script kiddie, not to mention hardened cyberwebs criminals, might be able let anyone in without you knowing or without even knowing the completely unskilled person they let in. That is to say, now even people who wouldn't be able to kick in a door, break a window, or pick a lock can potentially get into your house. And for what? So you can order at Amazon. It's not even a standard to be used for any delivery you want to use it for, just Amazon. This doesn't need an counter-argument. If you want to buy this, you have my blessing.

I just don’t understand why you’d put one of these on your house rather than a garage, outhouse, box. Or get things delivered to work or to a neighbour. There are some cases where this isn’t possible but I think you could spend the same money on a solution that doesn’t grant access to your whole house, even using the smart lock. Additionally, this seems to create a commonly accepted situation where anyone who looks like a delivery driver can have a go at a front door without anyone batting an eyelid.

It seems like there’s nothin people won’t give up for Amazon. We’ll have the Amazon “Cold and Flu Check” next where you have to photograph yourself naked and upload the images to S3.

I've thought about this service and what I could do moving forward for better security. A front door airlock came to mind; front Amazon Keyed door that leads to an alcove that is in front of another locked door. Big enough for packages and maybe a couple adults.
Unsure if the effort would be worth it however. Just a thought game.

As far as security goes, a problem with "airlocks" is similar to a problem with attached garages: It's easier to get into them than directly into the house, and once you are in them, they can provide cover for a more concerted effort to get into the house. An Amazon-Key-like system may mitigate the risk, of course, assuming that the users of the app are properly vetted and that attackers are deterred by cameras.

Something that's starting to happen in apartment construction is the inclusion of these "airlock" style rooms at the front of the apartment. That way you can get your packages delivered securely and still have your home secure.

I just use the Amazon Locker service. There's a set of Amazon Lockers at a convenience store I pass by on my way home from work. Super easy to use and I never have to worry about packages being stolen.

The only downside is that large packages or items from 3rd party sellers can't be shipped to a locker.

I use a smart home security system (AT&T Digital Life). Not without its flaws, and not automated but I can, as soon as I see tracking info in Amazon (or wherever) update delivery instructions with a one time door lock code for their drivers. This works with UPS, USPS, FedEx, whomever. When my company shipped me a fully loaded iMac and Cinema screen, while I was 100 miles away, this was perfect. I got a notification on my phone that the door was opened, I could see how long they were inside, and could verify that it was locked after.

My school recently got rid of their own book store in favor of Amazon Locker locations. Its fantastic. Basically its a storefront with a bunch of lockers in it and a counter. Most items get either free two day or one day (most school supplies and textbooks are one day). I get an email with a barcode and I head over and scan it and the locker opens up. Only downside is that its about a 10 minute walk from my dorm. You also get returns dealt with much faster since they can instantly verify you're actually returning the product.

The Kitty Cafe concept, where you can pay to have tea and play with cats in person, is sort of an AWS equivalent for the cat ownership experience. It's fascinating that tea is an expected cofactor in this relationship.

Amazon’s end goal is that any consumer purchase you make happens as follows: you say (think?) “hey Alexa I want $ITEM” - anywhere you are - and a few hours later at most, $ITEM is in your house, perhaps even in your fridge if applicable. Maybe Amazon didn’t make $ITEM, maybe they don’t employ the truck driver/make the drone who drops it off, but they’re the ones getting your money.

They’re doing extremely well at it so far, but it’s kind of terrifying that such a capitalism singularity is plausible.

An HN commenter a while back made the parallel between Amazon and Weyland-Yutani from Alien, which is quite apt.

Does anyone know how people are supposed to use these if they have a home alarm? This obviously won't work if your alarm is armed, unless you give Amazon your alarm code.

I've asked a few friends who have an alarm system and they said they would not give out the code if it's going to be passed along to delivery people (who could break into the house later and then disable the alarm).

But I guess not enough people have alarms for Amazon to be worried about this? Or perhaps this is aimed more at urban apartment-dwellers, who are less likely to have security systems?

> The bad news is Amazon missed four of my in-home deliveries and charged me (on top of a Prime membership) for gear that occasionally jammed and makes it awkward to share my own door with people, apps, services — and, of course, retailers — other than Amazon.

I don't understand this. Are there any APIs for Amazon key which will allow other people/apps to use the key? If yes, how do the damages work?

Are they absolutely crazy? The camera obviously needs to be operated independently from Amazon, being able to be remotely switched on or off by the very people it's supposed to watch completely defeats its purpose.

Anyone else find the whole setup strikingly similar to HAL-9000's role in 2001: A Space Odyssey? The article, too, presented the author with the same issue Dave experienced, when HAL wouldn't open the pod bay doors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE

HAL's decision was a conscious one, but I find it rather interesting a 1960s-Kubrick (& Arthur C. Clarke) could predict the casual use of multiple currently-cutting-edge devices, and incorporate them into the story:
- One being HAL's resemblance to a new amazon smart-home, at least in general purpose functionally, plus the vibe of sentience and omnipresence
- Another prediction being realtime face-to-face chat as shown in one scene, which would
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwo6JpMceg

Naturally this makes me wonder if artificial consciousness is possible or not (be it X years/decades/centuries into the future), what fundamental questions it may answer, and what consequences it may have. I am not necessarily referring to the consequences of recursively self-improving super-intelligence, but not excluding it either I suppose. I am referring to true consciousness, with human-level feelings and emotions, where the personality may have an effect on what it does rather than simply and emotionlessly taking the logical (or programmed) route every time.

Creation of artificial consciousness may be many steps away from trying to undertake; however, given the ever-accelerating rate of both digital-tech and neuroscience, if true consciousness is at all possible to program, it will likely come far sooner than expected. It's bound to also answer a lot of questions about our ontological understanding of our own perception in/of realities.

In any case, by the grace of God and Elon Musk, let's hope we can avoid a Hollywood catastrophe in the upcoming rise of AI in general through the end of time as far as collective consciousness is concerned.

In most of Europe AFAIK deliveries are never left at the door, and the deliveryperson calls you shortly before stopping to check that you are at home. In this scenario if I owned a smartlock I could just open the door remotely for them, no need to buy their lock and app.

Please be more specific than "most of europe".
As you are talking out of experience, you can just say where that happened.
At least in Germany no delivery person will call me to check whether I am home.

I'm in Serbia and deliverymen always call. There are multiple private courier services, having gotten to know a lot of the drivers they'll sometimes bring me the package to a different location if I'm not home but reasonably close. Online purchases here are mostly paid at point of delivery, in cash if one wishes. So the delivery driver also handles the payment. Hence, they can take some liberties with delivery since the goods haven't been payed for in advance.

The cash on delivery and flexibility of couriers is one of the few services that work quite well here, compared to some more developed countries.

For me, the private ones call you if you had provided your number. In other cases you get a slip in the postbox to schedule an appointment. If you miss again, you have to go to a post pick up centre. For DHL, if you miss this as well it gets sent to some DHL sorting centre which is quite far away.

In Belgium and the UK (Scotland), I've never had people leave packages in the open. Even if I explicitly ask them to leave them in the building hallway (because I'm at work) it's 50/50 whether they'll do it.

Either I need to be home to get a delivery or I have to rely on them giving my parcel to the concierge. Which is often more of a hassle as he finishes at 5 and I'm often not home in time to get my parcel from him.

The delivery people are notoriously overworked and constantly in a hurry. But there are other alternatives.

For example, a service I like is Inpost. They have a few dozen of huge post boxes in each bigger city. About 20 compartments in each. The package is not delivered to your house, but instead you have 3 days to retrieve it from one of those huge yellow boxes. It's a little walk, but you can do it in the middle of the night (they text you with opening code). You don't even have to know the recipient's delivery address, just the phone number and e-mail, and the yellow box closest to them. So in a way it protects privacy.

This is not about making it easier to get deliveries. When an Amazon delivery doesn't work out, they refund you. This is about reducing Amazon's costs. Don't do it. As long as we all don't do it, Amazon will credit us when deliveries fail.

This makes no sense as a cost reduction. Amazon drivers in my area don't even come to my door. Let alone knock. With this they want their drivers to:
1. Come to door
2. Knock
3. Wait a moment for response
4. Unlock door with app
5. Open Door
6. Drop package
7. Close and lock door

Delivery has turned into minimizing every excess second. I wager within a few months most of these amazon keys will be ignored as they leave packages on the driveway. I wouldn't buy this unless it comes with a guarantee it will be used.

> The Key-compatible locks are made by Yale and Kwikset, yet don’t work with those brands’ own apps. They also can't connect with a home-security system or smart-home gadgets that work with Apple and Google software.

> And, of course, the lock can’t be accessed by businesses other than Amazon. No Walmart, no UPS, no local dog-walking company.

Amazon practices have become more and more shady and fraud riddled. Just today I found out I was charged for Amazon Cloud Drive that I never authorized for 2 years and they only reversed the charge for the most recent year. I never agreed nor made any consent to signing up to the enlarged storage service. I was never notified my subscription was renewed nor was I aware I was charged through any email.

They absolutely refused to refund me for a purchase I never authorized! How corrupted is that?

Probably lots of people didn't about Amazon Key. Read the scary headline expecting burglary or orgy in the bedroom only to learn nothing all that terrible happened. A few delivery windows got missed. A lock didn't work at some point. With numerous positive things sprinkled in, and things that are coming. Oh but the author doesn't like that. "Who cares?" you are supposed to say. "Packages get delayed all the time! Sign me up".

More like how Sears used to work but with more locations so you don't have to go (as far) out of your way on your commute from work. You order stuff from a vast catalog (Amazon website) and then when it's available you go pick it up. The advantage is the selection of goods and that you don't have to actually do the shopping. No hunting through aisles and such, just in and out.

Alright, here's my idea: Amazon Locker Personal. Same principle as an Amazon Locker, but it's a single locker and you put it outside your house. Such things already exist, the only difference is that this one would be locked all the time and only the delivery person would be able to unlock it.

Somewhat off-topic, but is anybody using an external security webcam for their home that they'd recommend? Every review I've read seems to have very conflicting opinions. What's good? Ring? Arlo? Nest? Home-Grown w/ Raspberry Pi?

tl;dr: Amazon wants to be the Facebook of your home. Decide who and on what terms can access your data. Physical data. Trusted Amazon partners will have an advantage. Others will be excluded.

Actually I think this is not as bad as Facebook, because it's much less abstract and average Joes can wrap their head around it, and I think benefits are not as seductive as in FB's case. So I expect Amazon Key to fail.

If you want to use Amazon Key (what this article is about) then I think the only lock you can use is this specific one. Any other keyless lock system won't work from Amazon deliveries like this (at least as far as I can tell)

I explicitly don't want to use Amazon Key, but would like a keyless lock as keyed locks are basically a minor inconvenience for even an amateur lock picker, but a 5 key pin would take days or weeks to brute force.

Looks like a Schlage Touch might be the best option out there. Numeric keypad, no key hole, and has no radio connectivity of any kind to be tampered with.

Yeah, don't expect any articles about how this company upends and ends up virtually owning almost every industry it enters, making the Rockefellers and Carnegies of yester-century red with envy, and how it won't stop any time soon.

The longer-term solutions to home delivery are refrigerated and non-refrigerated storage pods with universal app access. These can either be built into a house / garage or be free-standing. This reduces the risks of having delivery people enter your home, which is a bad idea.

Also, in general, in tort-happy America, delivery people and other field workers should always wear bodycams to prove they were in the right because random people can and do make up convincing stories to file lawsuit$.